Lesson 176: Review of Lessons 161 and 162.

(161) Give me your blessing, holy Son of God. Complete abstraction is the natural condition of the mind. Yet now the mind, rather than looking on everything as one, sees but fragments of the whole. Thus specifics were made to take the place of abstraction. When you give specifics to the Holy Spirit, He will employ them on behalf of teaching you that one brother is all brothers and every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. This is the truth. Does it seem so to you?

Let us use the body as an example. It seems to be the body that you feel limits your freedom, makes you suffer, and at last puts out your life. Yet bodies are but symbols for a concrete form of fear, and fear attaches to symbols. When you look beyond the body, you see your brother’s loveliness so holy and so beautiful that his body disappears in the light. Now ask of him a blessing. He will answer.

Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.

I would behold you with the eyes of Christ, and see my perfect sinlessness in you.

(W-161.11:7-8)

Keep your mind focused beyond specific bodies and fears, and you will see your light reflected there.

(162) I am as God created me. These words are sacred, for they are the words God gave in answer to the world you made. Accept these words as your own, and all things seen within the illusion of misty clouds and vaporous illusions will vanish. Arise with these words in your mind, recall them throughout the day, and at night take them into sleep with you. Your dreams will be happy and your rest secure, your safety certain and your body healed, because you sleep and waken with the truth before you always. And as you practice these words faithfully, you are sharing them with the Sonship.

Lesson 177: Review of Lessons 163 and 164

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(163) There is no death. The Son of God is Free. Death, which is the embodiment of fear, seems very real to the separated ones. All things but death seem to be uncertain in their outcome, apt to fail, and too quickly lost however hard to gain. Only death can be counted on to deliver as expected.

Yet how can death be real, if LIFE IS? What is opposite to truth, cannot also be true. NO FORM of death is real. Not sickness, nor fear, nor failure, nor sadness, nor lack. God wills life; not death. God wills happiness and love, not fear. Choose God and Life and Love and BE FREE. Agreed?

(164) Now are we one with Him Who is our Source. Christ does not see the world as the separated ones do. He looks past time to eternity; He hears the sounds of the world but faintly, choosing instead to hear the Song of Heaven and the Voice for God; He experiences the sound of silence into which the world cannot intrude, and the peace that surpasses the world’s understanding. Christ is the Son Whom God created, and that Son is YOU. Exchange all suffering for joy today.

Lesson 178: Review of Lessons 165 and 166.

(165) Let not my mind deny the Thought of God. What makes this world seem real to you except your own denial of the truth that lies beyond it? Unhappy, hopeless thoughts are obscuring the truth from you! And yet, if you were to go just a bit further, and go beyond appearances to the truth of perfect happiness and the eternal life your Father wills for you, you would see that Heaven awaits but for acceptance. And once found, you will be so willing to let go what is not real, and accept what IS.

(166) I am entrusted with the gifts of God. If you know the gifts that are yours, given you by the Father, you walk this world with your head held high, exuding confidence and power, and perfectly happy always. Although poverty and futility may appear to the right, and misery and hopelessness may appear to the left, those who walk on the path with Christ experience an abundance of the gifts of freedom, happiness and joy.

As you walk this path with Him, you become aware that you are not alone, not bereft nor afraid. You set the example for the rest. You keep a smile on your face always, you are always well and never sick, and lines of stress from fear and indecision do not touch upon your holy forehead. For you are the living proof of what Christ’s touch can offer everyone. If those in fear would only let go of the false security they think they have in the world that they think they know. If they would only accept the truth that God goes with them wherever they go, as well as all His Love and true security that are part of Him and you. Then they, too, can walk with you and Christ in light. His gifts are yours, entrusted to your care, to give to all who chose the lonely road you have escaped. Show your brothers that there is another way for them to walk. Show them that God’s gifts are given to all His children.

Lesson 179: Review of Lessons 167 and 168.

(167) There is one life, and that I share with God. When God created you as His Son, He created you perfect and eternal. He gave you but the one life, which you share with Him. The temporary “life” that you appear to have on this earth is not real, but is merely a state that may be termed “sleeping” and “dreaming.” When you “awaken” from this sleep, you may remember some of your dreams in part, but not all of them, and then you pick up your day from where you left it the day before.

Just so, when you awaken in God, you will remember nothing but Love and Light. When the mind truly awakes, it but continues as it always was, alive and happy eternally, without any memory of ever having been “asleep,” because it was not real, only imagined. God created only life.

You may ask, “What about death?” Is it the opposite of life? No, it is not. There are no opposites to life because only what God created is real; any “opposite” to what God created is not real. Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator, which is impossible as you are mind in the Mind of God. A thought of death does not and cannot naturally extend from a thought of life. You can extend the idea of life, but you cannot give birth to an idea that was never given you. Without a true Source, a thought cannot be real. It will simply return to its source, which is nothing and nowhere.

You share one life with God because you have but one Source, a Source from Which perfection comes to you, remaining always in the holy mind which He created perfect. As you were, so are you now and will forever be. You know your Source, your Self, and your Holiness. Your Source is God Who created life. He created YOU.

(168) Your grace is given me. I claim it now. If you but knew the meaning of God’s Love, hope and despair would be impossible. For hope would be forever satisfied and despair of any kind would be unthinkable. In grace you see a light that covers all the world in love, and you can watch the fear disappear from every face as hearts rise up and claim the light as theirs. God’s grace suffices in all things. He gives it, and you receive it, and you are redeemed by it from the illusory world you made.

The gift of grace has been most carefully preserved within your heart, waiting to be acknowledged. This is the gift by which God leans to you and lifts you up, taking this final step Himself. All steps but this you learn, instructed by His Voice. But finally He takes you in His Arms and sweeps away the cobwebs of your sleep. His gift is more than just an answer to life’s questions. It restores all the memories of His Love that the sleeping mind forgot, and the certainty of what Love’s meaning is. You are now no more a reflection of His light. You are the light which makes reflection possible!

Lesson 180: Review of Lessons 169 and 170

(169) By grace I live. By grace I am released. Forgiveness is the central theme that runs throughout salvation. In meaningful relationships, the course it runs is directed and its outcome is sure. And now we ask for grace, the final gift salvation can bestow. We are not asking for the unaskable. We are urged to bear witness to the Word of God to hasten the experience of truth, and speed its advent into every mind that recognizes truth’s effects on YOU. Listen for the Call to waken!

(170) There is no cruelty in God and none in me. To attack is cruel, both to you and to the one you have chosen to attack. Cruel attack will merely take an already low situation to an even lower one. Our goal is to rise above, not to sink below. All attack is based on fear, not on love, and thus attack serves no useful purpose to those who love God. Therefore, choose love over fear and attack. Choose God. In any situation that appears to threaten you, simply ask the Holy Spirit to help you see it clearly, to see it as a call for love, and to respond in a way that will end the threat for both you and your brother, and lift you both above it into the light. Your brother will thank you, as will the Holy Spirit. Now THAT is “ripple responsibility.” Let only love ripple from you throughout the Sonship. Cast your pebbles upon the river of life responsibly.

Lesson 181: I trust my brothers, who are one with me.

When you attack a brother, you are not attacking the truth in him; you are attacking what your ego has perceived in him. They are not the same thing. Unless you look beyond your brother’s errors, you will not see the truth of him and instead will magnify the errors. They will then become blocks to your awareness of your Self that lies beyond your own mistakes. And now you have misperceived your brothers and your Self.

The answer to these errors lies in changing your focus. Remove your focus from your brother’s errors, look beyond them to the light, and now you will see both you and your brother in the light that is the truth of you both. And above all, do not let anger tempt you to stop short of seeing truly. Your love for everyone you look upon attests to your remembrance of the holy Self in everyone. Trust this!

Lesson 182: I will be still an instant and go home.

This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true. You feel like an alien here, going about uncertainly in endless searching, seeking in darkness what you cannot find, often not even recognizing what it is you seek. You think you want fulfillment, yet you do not even know what that is! Some try to express this estrangement in games; others will deny that they are sad; still others will maintain that having a home anywhere but here is illusion and is only a dream that is not real. But you know that this is not your home. And you are right.